Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

The flight was long even in objective terms, long enough that it could have only one destination. Finally, they docked at a satland which, from the glimpse Christopher got through the pilot’s port and the kanji signage in the transfer chute, could only be Takara.

“The Director’s on Memphis !” Christopher asked, turning as he walked and throwing the question back over his shoulder to Dryke. Dryke’s only answer was a straight-arm, flat-palm shot to the middle of Christopher’s back, shoving him forward.

Dryke and two of the soldiers escorted Christopher to a med station, where he was stripped, scanned, sampled, searched inside and out, and, finally, given new clothes—a rigger’s pajamalike skinsides. He endured the exercise stoically, refusing the humiliation he might have felt.

Then he was bustled aboard another spacecraft, this one cavernous and buslike, with low, extra-wide seats that were actually uncomfortable without the work suits they had apparently been designed for. Their party of four was scattered among the forty seats—Christopher and Dryke at opposite sides of a middle row, the soldiers at opposite ends of the center aisle.

As on the shuttle, Dryke never took his right hand off his shockbox or his eyes off Christopher. The level, unflinching gaze had in it something of a carrion bird’s hopefulness and something of a timber wolfs watchfulness.

For the most part, Christopher ignored him. All of his surroundings were new, and he managed enough curiosity about them to divert himself by attending to the novelty. But he could not stop his mind from thinking, from trying to weave in the last few threads. And one of those threads involved the security of Memphis , which meant it involved Mikhail Dryke. It was hard to offer anything, even a thought, to the man who had shot down his father. But Sasaki might not be the best to face the question he wanted to ask.

“Is Roger Marshall coming up to Memphis , too?”

Dryke’s gaze never wavered, and his expression never changed.

“He never went through Selection, you know.”

Still there was no response.

“I hear that a lot of people are going to be on Memphis who never went through Selection or Training. If Marshall’s one of them, you might want to pay attention to whether his freight gets here before him. And if it does, you might want to make sure it gets the ‘A’ inspection—the kind you’d give something belonging to me.”

Almost five minutes passed in silence.

“Why?” Dryke said, as though a complicated equation had ground through his mind without generating a solution.

“Because I’m not the new Jeremiah—which means that someone else is.”

Another long silence. Christopher understood that it was as hard for Dryke to accept anything from Christopher as it was for him to offer it.

“Why Marshall?” Dryke asked finally.

“Do you know a good reason why he would call my home and wonder to Loi how I was dealing with my father’s death?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe. It was two days after I disappeared, and two days before the attack on Memphis . Maybe he’d lost track of me and needed to make sure I wasn’t on board somehow.”

“Why?”

“Because of a promise to my father.”

Dryke looked away, raising a hand to scratch the bridge of his nose. “A lot of maybes.”

“Then he is coming,” Christopher said.

The gaze firmed and found Christopher again.

“Has it occurred to you that the attack on Memphis was a successful one, after all?” Christopher asked. “The real damage was done to security. This panic plan puts hundreds of people on the ship who would otherwise never have gotten there, apparently including Marshall. And I’m guessing it overwhelms your normal screening procedures, too. Are you streamlining things to get people processed faster? Giving anyone a pass? Top management? The committee? Roger Marshall? Don’t answer, I can’t do anything with the information. Just questions.”

Something had awakened in Dryke’s eyes. His head tipped back slightly, and he stared at Christopher with something closer to—fear?

One last card. “Tell me—Marshall wasn’t involved in drawing up this plan, was he?”

There was a suspended moment, in which Christopher could almost see the picture in his mind replicating itself in Dryke’s. Then there was a bump as they docked with Memphis , and the all-clear tone.

This time, Dryke preceded him down the aisle. He seemed to be in a hurry.

The suite in which Sasaki received him was neither large nor grand, but it bore a stamp. A pale-tinted hanging scroll sandwiched in translute was strung between ceiling and floor as a room divider; in lighted display recesses on the wall were a bronze horse, a gleaming metal-paper origami of a dragon in flight, and a deep-rubbed mahogany Buddah, surrounded by flowers and candles, smiling within at some untold amusement.

Other recesses were empty, but there were two trunklike shipping casks stacked in a corner of the outer room. Furniture seemed sparse until Sasaki showed him a pair of facing chairs that slid out from an inner wall as though they were drawers. She settled in one and invited him to the other with an open hand. She was smaller than he had expected, and braver—they were alone, Sasaki having sent his escorts back.

“You said that you wanted the truth,” she said. “Are you equal to it?”

“How do you know, before you’re tested?”

She nodded. “A good answer. Ask your questions.”

“Is Memphis ready for space?”

“It will be, very shortly.”

“When are you leaving?”

“From Takara, a matter of days. For Tau Ceti, a matter of a few weeks. We will go out for our certification flight with full crew and manifest. If the systems are sound, we will not turn back at Pluto.”

“Who will be governor?”

She smiled slightly. “That duty will be mine, for now.”

“And what happens here? Who takes over? Or will there be anything to take over?”

“No,” she said. “This is the end of the Diaspora, as we have suspected for some time it would be. After Memphis sails, the Project will fall into bankruptcy. But the vultures will find very little meat on the bones. The money is all here, in Memphis and Ur . We have bought two starships for the price of five. Many promises will be broken, and many bills left unpaid. Not even Allied has ever seen an honest accounting.”

“Why that way?”

“Because it was time. Because it was the only way the flower would blossom,” she said.

Dryke joined them then, entering the suite quietly and standing with crossed arms beside the hanging scroll. Sasaki looked up past Christopher with a questioning glance.

“Marshall missed his flight from LAX,” Dryke said. “He apologizes and says he has to have more time to wrap up business. His personals didn’t miss their flight. I had the casks pulled out of the line on Technica and checked. The one that was supposed to be art and books was two hundred and eighty kilos of underwater explosives.”

Christopher closed his eyes, the rush of relief carrying away the strength from his limbs.

“I should have wondered why a man like that wanted to go,” Dryke said.

“Sometimes perfection is found in the result, not in the method,” Sasaki said. “And sometimes perfection is only possible in thought.” She looked to Christopher. “Now a question for you,” she said. “Do you want to come on Memphis ?”

Her words encircled his heart and tightened until he could hardly breathe. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out. The reasons were all turned around inside each other, connected at odd places, sometimes not connected at all. His motives were all suspect, shallow, trivial—or else so deep and fundamental that he could not wrap sentences around them. “I don’t know,” he said at last.